Albus Dumbledore, Accelerationist
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: Many have criticized Albus Dumbledore for not taking adequate steps to undermine Tom Riddle's plays for power, rein in Severus Snape's behavior toward Gryffindors, and see to Harry Potter's welfare... but what if that was the point? 'It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor...' (Manipulative!Dumbledore. Oneshot. Crackfic.)


**Author's Note** : In this context, Accelerationism is the notion that The Revolution (TM) can be brought about more quickly by deliberately working to aggravate the flaws of the current society to the breaking point.

An alternate title might be 'a psychotic manipulative Dumbledore you have NOT seen before'.

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Albus Dumbledore had never given up the revolution, even if he had become disillusioned with the ability of one man to lead it.

It was obvious to him that the revolution would be inevitable. Power had centralized hopelessly in the hands of the decadent and inbred, and the less privileged could not work their way up in magical Britain: jobs, knowledge, and even reasonable loans were restricted to the Pureblood aristocracy. The sole privilege the Purebloods lacked was immunity to the Killing Curse.

As such, the only way reform would come was through frequent, flawless, and unflinching use of said Unforgivable. When the streets were piled high with Pureblood corpses, then the fresh young revolutionaries could seize the power that should always have been their birthright and drive the Wizarding world into a new age. One that would not worship the Statute of Secrecy, one already accustomed to warfare and purges, one ready to ascend to their rightful place...

Yes, Albus Dumbledore had relucantly given up the Great Man theory of history in favor of observing social forces. But he was not so complete a convert as to neglect the power of one Great Man to shift those forces.

Given the human love for self-preservation, when would the revolution come? Why, when self-preservation demanded the revolution. And when would self-preservation demand the revolution? When the Pureblood aristocracy went mad and attempted to purge from society all who lacked family trees bearing a strong resemblance to shrubs. And when would they go so mad? When corruption and short-term self-interest decayed the government to such a point that they could move essentially unopposed.

Thus Albus set about castrating the opposition.

Fortunately, Aberforth might have remarked, botching things through sheer arrogance and neglect came naturally to him. Once ashamed, he now embraced that with utmost pride. It meant that his sabotage appeared entirely organic as he failed in reform after reform, causing magical creatures and Muggleborns alike to become increasingly distrustful toward the government. Utter incompetents ascended to high-ranking positions, and he did nothing to oppose them. They were a joy to behold: such swine would make for fine executions after the uprising.

Likewise, when he became Headmaster, he carefully monitored the most promising Purebloods and earmarked them for later elimination, while letting Horace Slughorn sit on his broad rear and fiddle with himself as Slytherin House became a breeding-ground for Death Eaters. Quite brilliant of Tom, really - the boy had helped move the timetable up by decades with his aggravation of societal tensions.

He would have loved to say that Tom was in on his scheme, and acting as flawless controlled opposition, but "Lord Voldemort" appeared to be an unwitting agent of providence. For the sake of his former student, he did hope Tom had come up with the same scheme independently; after all, it would be downright embarrassing for a half-blood to clown around under the banner of Pureblood supremacy. Tom appeared earnest, but who knew - Surely he should have realized, if his movement was sincere, that Albus could cut his legs out from under him merely by revealing his ancestry?

Since it played into his own goals, however, Albus declined to notify anyone that the Dark Lord Voldemort was actually Tom Riddle. With some sadness, but mostly excitement, he watched as Tom's atrocities rippled across Britain. Through recruiting the few decent Pureblood lines to act as vigilantes, Albus was able to dump them into the meat-grinder that was Tom's rampage; as a further bonus, they even took Tom-aligned lines down with them. Multiple families of the so-called Sacred Twenty-Eight were rendered extinct, and several more ended in the male line.

"Preservation of Pure Blood"? Ha! If only the rate of decline had continued, Tom's aid might have enabled him to wipe out all the major Pureblood lines before the turn of the millennium!

Alas, then came a prophecy about Tom's possible defeat, and Albus had to Confound both James Potter and Frank Longbottom. He wished to keep his hands clean of the failure of whatever protections they chose, but he was certain they would screw it up.

Indeed, the protections came down. Unfortunately, Tom screwed up his attack on the Potters, and Albus was left with the unwelcome prospect of peacetime. And things had been going so well...

He at least made sure every Pureblood criminal without overwhelming evidence of consensual participation in Tom's mad schemes - and some with such evidence - walked free. Oh, publicly he protested... but all that was needed for evil to triumph in the world was for good men to do nothing, and Albus excelled at strategically doing nothing. Despite Tom's unexpected defeat, his people had made it out with their skins, and that would be all that was needed for Pureblood supremacists to essentially win this conflict.

Meanwhile, the boy who had been marked as Tom's equal was shipped off to the most loathsome batch of Muggles Albus could find on short notice, who conveniently happened to be his blood relatives. He slapped on just enough protections that they couldn't outright murder the boy, and enough monitoring spells that he would be notified if they attempted to starve the boy to death, and sat tight.

Harry Potter, when he emerged from his ten-year prison sentence, would have Muggle persecution scorched into his heart of hearts, and soon be given ample reason to loathe Pureblood supremacists with equal fervor. Though he might exhibit Stockholm Syndrome toward his captors for some time... sometime during his adulthood, that fog would lift. Heaven help whatever hapless fool happened to be nearby when the clarity hit, and the rage of decades poured forth.

He would also hate Albus Dumbledore, of course - that poor, forgiving fool who had also proven a cool manipulator. In his abuse-warped mind, he would come to believe Albus's clemency towards wrongdoers and neglect of the innocence were two sides of the same coin, and adopt a policy of utter mercilessness toward his enemies. But where Tom had apparently turned traitor upon his own kind to prove he was no mere upstart, Harry would despise Slytherins and love only the disenfranchised... while his desensitization as a child soldier would drive him to equal, if not surpass, Tom's savagery.

Yes, Harry Potter would be the Great Man whom Gellert had failed to become. Assuming he didn't die first - the prophecy allowed for that possibility, and Harry was Tom's Horcrux. However, since Tom had made sashimi of his own soul and managed to get himself with his own Killing Curse once already, Albus would continue to bet on Harry.

Besides which, Augusta Longbottom and her brother-in-law were doing a lovely job of traumatizing Neville. If that boy made it through childhood without snapping and levelling Longbottom Manor, he too would hold hidden resentment toward Pureblood ways, and could potentially prove a backup revolutionary leader. Until then, the only upkeep Albus would perform on him would be instilling in him a terminal fear and hatred of Slytherins, with the House's now-indelible ties to Pureblood supremacy.

That wouldn't be too difficult. Severus was so terribly easy to manipulate, provided one had a hook into him, and it would be quite easy to persuade him Harry and Neville were deliberately botching their Potions work, monkeying around whenever he wasn't looking, and mocking him to anyone who would listen. The man's own instability would do the rest. Since Severus already thought he had an insane bias toward Gryffindors (when, in reality, he had only been practicing the same reinforcement of Pureblood recklessness and entitlement as ever), he could even innocuously drip such rumors into Severus's ear under the pretense he found it "endearing".

Poor Severus. He'd once had potential as a revolutionary, but then he'd thrown in with Tom's stupidity; with such a tainted background, he could only be of use as a Judas goat.

Oh well. One had to break some eggs to make an omelette, and Albus's plans would result in such an omelette as the Wizarding world had never seen.

The greatest pity was that he would not live to see the revolution, since all factors pointed to it only breaking free upon his death; despite himself, he'd retained a reputation as a bastion of goodness and light thanks to Tom's inane phobia. Really, the boy could go around calling himself a Dark Lord, but still trembled in fear at the memory of a single dresser set alight? Ah well. It was what it was, and so the Pureblood lunatics likely would not move to assert total dominance without him laid in his grave.

And so they would dig their own grave in turn, as the masses rose in revolt and washed the grime from Britain with the purest blood.

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 **Author's Note** : Inspired by the reams of fanfiction (my own included) which respond to the corruption of the canon Wizarding society by overhauling it with a Harry-led revolution. So what if that was a super-manipulative!Dumbledore's endgame? After all, there are several stories in which he's deliberately propping up Britain's Pureblood-supremacist social order while pretending to oppose it... but doing so only enables its most loathsome and dysfunctional aspects.

Well, what if that was the point...?


End file.
